Paste or type your French text below — words, characters, sentences and paragraphs update as you go. Free to use, no login or account required.
Start typing to see your most frequent words.
The FrenchWrite word counter — French-optimized, not a generic English tool — counts words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and estimated reading time in any French text, without a sign-up. Paste your text above and all six statistics update in real time with every keystroke — no button to click. Built for candidates who need to verify their word count before submitting TCF, TEF, DELF or DALF expression écrite tasks. The exam goal presets let you set an official minimum and watch your progress bar fill as you write. For a complete walkthrough, read the French Word Counter guide or the blog article on how to count words in French.
Yes. In French, spaces — not apostrophes — separate words, so any sequence of characters between two spaces counts as a single word. An apostrophe joins two grammatical elements without adding a space, so it never splits a word in two. This is the same rule word processors and exam graders both use.
Paste or type into the box above and all six numbers — words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, and estimated reading time — update with every keystroke; there's no button to click. Click one of the exam presets (TCF Tâche 1, TCF Tâche 2, DELF B1, DELF B2, DALF C1) to set the official minimum for your task, or type your own number if you're working to a different target — either way a progress bar tracks how close you are.
The Top Words table below the stats lists your 10 most-repeated content words (common stop words like le, de and et are filtered out), with a count and percentage for each — useful for catching the word you've leaned on too heavily before you submit. Everything runs in your browser; nothing you type is sent to a server.
To check verb conjugations while writing, use the French verb conjugator. To confirm noun gender before writing an adjective, use the French gender checker.
Use the Exam Goal presets above to track your progress against these official minimums.
| Exam | Task | Min. words | Format |
|---|---|---|---|
| TCF (all) | Tâche 1 | 60 | Décrire / raconter |
| TCF (all) | Tâche 2 | 120 | Donner son opinion |
| TEF Canada | Section A | 80–120 | Fait divers |
| TEF Canada | Section B | 200+ | Texte d'opinion |
| DELF A2 | Production écrite | 60–80 | Lettre simple |
| DELF B1 | Production écrite | 160–180 | Lettre ou article |
| DELF B2 | Production écrite | 250 | Contribution à un débat |
| DALF C1 | Production écrite | 400 | Synthèse de documents |
French number-writing has one genuine exception worth knowing, because it can change a word count significantly. Traditional spelling omits the hyphen specifically around et ("and") in numbers like 21, 31, and 41 — but hyphenates every other compound number:
| Number | Written form | Word count |
|---|---|---|
| 22 | vingt-deux | 1 (hyphenated) |
| 21 (traditional spelling) | vingt et un | 3 (spaces around et) |
| 21 (1990 reform spelling) | vingt-et-un | 1 (fully hyphenated) |
| 81 | quatre-vingt-un | 1 (no et involved, fully hyphenated) |
Both traditional and reformed spellings of numbers are in active use in French writing, so this is genuinely a case where the "correct" count depends on which convention your source text follows — not a fixed rule this tool can resolve for you.
The rule is simple and applies uniformly: spaces separate words, and any sequence of characters between two spaces counts as one word. An apostrophe or a hyphen inside a word doesn't create a space, so it doesn't split the word — regardless of how many smaller words it's built from. That means contractions like l'école, fixed words like aujourd'hui, and short forms like c'est each count as ONE word, not two. This is the same convention used by Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and this tool.
| Word | Word count | Why |
|---|---|---|
| l'école | 1 | Apostrophe, no space |
| c'est | 1 | Apostrophe, no space |
| l'eau | 1 | Apostrophe, no space |
| j'ai | 1 | Apostrophe, no space |
| aujourd'hui | 1 | Fixed word with an apostrophe, no space |
| qu'il / s'il | 1 each | Apostrophe, no space |
| presqu'île / quelqu'un | 1 each | Fixed compound words |
| peut-être | 1 | Hyphen, no space |
| grand-mère | 1 | Hyphen, no space |
| arc-en-ciel | 1 | Two hyphens, still zero spaces |
| c'est-à-dire | 1 | Apostrophe and two hyphens, still zero spaces |
A full worked example — "Aujourd'hui, ma grand-mère m'a préparé un café avec de l'eau chaude." — is 11 words: Aujourd'hui, / ma / grand-mère / m'a / préparé / un / café / avec / de / l'eau / chaude. Four of those eleven tokens contain an apostrophe or a hyphen, and none of them split. Paste this exact sentence above to check it yourself.
None of these exam bodies publish a technical specification for counting elided or hyphenated words — there's no official rulebook that says "l'école is one word, not two." In practice, all of them rely on the same space-separated convention this tool uses, because that's the convention built into every word processor and every mechanical word count. What actually differs between the exams isn't the definition of a word — it's how strictly the minimum itself is enforced:
| Exam | Administered by | How the minimum is enforced |
|---|---|---|
| TCF / TCF Canada | France Éducation International | Strict — falling under the minimum caps the task-completion score directly |
| DELF | France Éducation International | Guidance — word counts are typically presented as approximate targets, with correctors using judgment on development and content |
| DALF | France Éducation International | Guidance — same approach as DELF, with higher expected length and complexity |
| TEF / TEF Canada | CCI Paris Île-de-France | Task-specific minimums, assessed alongside content and structure rather than as a hard cutoff alone |
Since no board defines "a word" differently from the standard convention, the safest approach for any of these exams is the same: use a counter that follows the space-separated rule — like this one — rather than counting by eye, where elided and hyphenated words are the easiest place to lose track.
Paste or type your text into the box above. All statistics — words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and reading time — update with every keystroke. No button to click.
Yes, completely free. No account, no subscription, no hidden fees. Open the tool and start counting immediately.
TCF requires a minimum of 60 words for Tâche 1 and 120 words for Tâche 2. Click the TCF T1 or TCF T2 preset buttons above to set the goal and track your progress automatically.
Yes. The tool shows two separate character counts: "Characters" (including spaces) and "Chars (no spaces)". Both update in real time.
No. All counting runs locally in your browser. Your text never leaves your device and is not stored anywhere.
One word. There's no space inside l'école, and the standard word-counting rule — used by this tool and virtually every word processor — counts any sequence of characters separated by spaces as one word, regardless of the apostrophe.
As one word each. Hyphens, like apostrophes, don't create a space, so peut-être and even the three-part arc-en-ciel each count as a single word.
No exam board publishes a technical rule for counting elided or hyphenated words specifically. In practice all of them rely on the same space-separated convention this tool uses. What differs is how strictly the minimum itself is enforced, not how a word is defined — see the exam comparison above.
It depends on spelling convention. In traditional spelling, vingt et un is written with spaces around et and counts as three words. Under the 1990 spelling reform, vingt-et-un is fully hyphenated and counts as one.
The TCF Canada Expression Écrite requires you to complete three tasks in 60 minutes, each with a strict minimum word count. Learn the exact minimums for Tasks 1, 2, and 3 and how to hit them every time.
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